Despite the friendly personality inherent in the Mr. Coffee brand name, it's basically an automatic coffee maker like any other. I personally have never noticed a difference in coffee quality due to the maker, it's all in the grounds. Mr. Coffee comes in your choice of black and white, both basket and cone style filters, and sizes ranging from 4-12 cups. Other options like pause-and-serve and programmable start timers are available. And if you'd like to take your coffee with you, thermal-style carafes will keep your coffee hot without the need to transfer it to a thermos.

To make a cup of coffee, pull out the filter basket, drop in a filter, fill with the appropriate amount of grounds, slide the filter basket back into position, add the appropriate amount of water, and hit the start button (or my favorite: program the timer to have a pot ready for you when you wake up). A standard coffee scoop is 1/8 of a cup, and I find one scoop per three to four 8 ounce cups of coffee is about right, depending on how strong you like it. A large scoop is 1/4 of a cup, and a rounded scoopful is good for a 10 cup coffee maker. These sizes are misleading, however. A standard coffee mug holds more like 10-12 ounces of coffee, not 8 ounces. Those little 6 ounce coffee cups and saucers are for old women and dinner parties. If you want a cup that actually holds 8 fluid ounces, you're pretty much stuck with styrofoam.

Automatic coffee makers have a hot plate under the carafe to keep it warm. Some versions have a timer, typically 2 hours, to prevent you from leaving it on all day while you're gone. To do that would be expensive in electricity and a potential fire hazard1. Of course, the coffee maker at work is a different story, you don't want that one to have a hot plate timer. It's typically going to be used for most of the day by various people and a timer would result in the abomination that is cold coffee. Interestingly, the hot plate performs double duty in brewing the coffee. The underside of the hot plate is the part that heats the water, forcing it up to the filter basket to drip through the grounds.

1. Ouroboros says leaving coffee on the hot plate too long also tends to concentrate and scald the coffee, ruining it.
2. interrobang adds that the grounds will spill out of the filter and into the carafe if you overload it.
3. shaogo recommends removing the grounds from the basket immediately, since the steam trapped in them will release bitter oils into the fresh pot below after about 5 minutes.
4. randombit says storing the coffee grounds in the freezer helps them retain their flavor longer.